LOCKEZ'S PROFILE

LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
The Unofficial Squaresoft MUD is a free online game based on the worlds and combat systems of your favorite Squaresoft games. UOSSMUD includes job trees from FFT and FF5, advanced classes from multiple other Square games, and worlds based extremely accurately upon Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, and Final Fantasies 5, 6, and 7. Travel through the original worlds and experience events that mirror those of the original games in an online, multiplayer format.

If a large, highly customized MUD, now over 10 years old and still being expanded, with a job system and worlds based on some of the most popular console RPGs seems interesting to you, feel free to log on and check it out. Visit uossmud.sandwich.net for information about logging on.
Born Under the Rain
Why does the jackal run from the rain?

Search

The goal of a game

To me, the goal of a game is to progress through the dungeons, beat the bosses, complete the story if there is one. These are the primary challenges, and the measure of progress in the game. Gaining power is a means to that end. As a result I strongly dislike games where you can grind your power up to be able to overpower the game's challenges without having to depend on strategy.

To one of my friends, the goal of a game is to become more powerful. Bosses are only important in that they block your progress and often drop equipment or powerups. Story is likewise simply a means to end, and the reason for him to play a game's story is because it unlocks additional power. The ultimate goal is to become as strong as he can. The final boss of a game is generally ignored, as there is no reason to defeat it unless it opens up a New Game+ mode.

I'm wondering which of these two views is more common? What do you guys see as the means versus the end when playing an RPG? Or is the goal in a game something completely different, to you?

MUDs

Anyone play MUDs here? They are basically text-based MMORPGs. I am looking for some good ones, as I enjoy being able to chat as I play a game (especially being able to chat with its creators as I play it). I thought this would be a great place to ask, since they have a lot in common with RPG Maker games, being RPGs created by amateur game designers.

Right now the only one I play is the Unofficial Squaresoft MUD, which I actually help build, and which is completely awesome but I want to branch out more. I have played some of the other really popular ones, but I'm interested in the opinions of people here, since I think other RPG Maker designers are a lot more likely to enjoy the same things as me - combat strategy, engaging characters, story-driven gameplay - instead of endlessly deep roguelikes that focus entirely on customization and grind. UOSSMUD is one of the only ones I've found where anything other than the character customization actually captured my interest. Not that customization isn't great, but it doesn't make a game by itself.

RPG with no repeatable battles

I'm attempting to start on a new RPG. Now, given that my last one took like six or seven years to finish, and this one is going to be much more complicated, this may end up getting scrapped. But my basic premise is something that I think will solve the biggest problem I have with keeping myself interested in commercial RPGs.

In my new game, you will not be asked to do any battle twice.

If you can beat the battle once, that should be proof that you can beat it. There's no need to make you do the same thing over and over. Repetition and grind are the least fun part of RPGs.

Now, yes, I realize that the ability to repeat battles for the sake of increasing your power is considered by a lot of people to actually be the definition of an RPG. But I think this is a bastardization of what makes RPGs fun. Tabletop RPGs don't have this feature - you are presented with whatever obstacles the dungeon master thinks are challenging, and the ability to repeat them is not present. Many Final Fantasy games have this feature but downplay it a lot - you are given the ability to grind, but unlike Dragon Quest games, the game is designed so that if you simply go through each dungeon a single time and fight whatever enemies you come across, you will be more than powerful enough and will experience very little repetition. The Fire Emblem series actually already does exactly what I'm talking about, though Fire Emblem games are tactical RPGs, not traditional RPGs.

However, removing all *possibility* of repetition not only means that each battle will be doable just once, but also that each battle will have to be different, and challenging in different ways. In Fire Emblem there are only 30-40 battles per game, but in a traditional RPG there would have to be hundreds at least. Do you guys think this is feasible? What kind of battle system do you think would best suit this type of gameplay?

My initial thought is to go for a Chrono Trigger type battle system - having enemies that move around and attacks that have geometric areas of effect would certainly help keep things more interesting than a standard battle system would allow. However I'm curious if anyone has any other ideas they think would be particularly well suited for this type of game. Yay for community input!

(Also, I'm not sure this is worth mentioning, but I'm planning on filling every dungeon with puzzles that use Zelda/Lufia 2/Wild Arms style tools, to help accommodate the fact that there will have to be a lot less battles than a normal RPG would have.)